Italian Holocaust Remembrance Day

This year’s commemoration will consist of a talk by Sergio Parussa, a specialist in Italian Jewish literature and culture under Fascism, and the screening of a newly restored and subtitled version of Carlo Lizzani’s “L’oro di Roma” (1961), the first film based on events leading to the final deportation of the Jews of Rome. On September 26, 1943, Nazi Colonel Herbert Kappler summoned representatives of the Jewish community of Rome and ordered them to collect fifty kilograms of gold within thirty-six hours. Their punishment, in case of failure or disobedience, was the detention of 200 people. Gold was collected, but on October 16, 1943, nothing could save 1,259 Jews from deportation: it was the beginning of the end for the Jewish community of the Roman Ghetto.